Death squad’s deadly reply

Press, 17 June 1983, Page 14

Death squad’s deadly reply

From

MIKE ROSE,

in Rio de Janeiro

When Rio de Janeiro’s new governor, Leonel Brizola, took power in mid-March, he swore to put a quick end to police brutality and the notorious death squads. Within one week, he had their response: a spate of killings of petty criminals and juvenile delinquents. In one particularly brutal incident, three youths were found tied together with barbed wire, their bodies riddled with bullets. On one of the corpses was found a note written in the victim’s own blood, stating “I was a bus pickpocket.” On another, the bloody script read, “Welcome Governor Brizola.”

Brizola is a Left-wing firebrand whose threats in the early 1960 s of unleashing a million armed men on to the streets to start a socialist revolution was partly responsible for the 1964 military coup. He was elected to govern the state of Rio de Janeiro on a ticket of radical change. His manifesto contains pledges to create new social welfare channels and thousands of jobs to offset the growing tide of unemployment. It also promises to improve rela-, tions between the police and the public which, he claims, have reached an all-time low. He has also inherited some kingsize problems, not least the city of Rio itself. Nearly a quarter of its nine million- inhabitants live in ftyelas, urban slums and shantytowns. Many are classed as marginados (marginals) who are without steady jobs and who are unpro-

tected by any form of welfare assistance.

The poverty and misery of the favelas is frequently highlighted by their location alongside luxuiy villas and apartment blocks in some of Rio’s most exclusive suburbs. These provide ostentatious displays of wealth which often prove too great a temptation for the impoverished residents of the neighbourhood. The result is one of the highest crime rates in the world, a large part of which comprises mugging, robberies, and petty crime. It is from among the perpetrators of these petty crimes that the off-duty policemen and soldiers who make up the death squads select their victims. They wander unmolested in the twilight world of urban degeneration, stalking their game in seedy bars, clubs, and backstreets. They justify their vicious and arbitrary acts with Nazilike pretexts of “eradicating socially useless scum.” Yet, while the small fry are eliminated almost at will, the “godfathers" of Brazilian crime remain curiously insulated against the death squads’ crusade, fifee to carry on business as usual. The unofficial measures of the death squads in curbing the rising

crime rate are not alone in causing consternation. There are numerous documented cases of trigger-happy police going about their official business with guns blazing, leaving a trail of dead, often innocent people.

Brizola recently said: “Nowadays, it is difficult to decide who is worse — the crook or the policeman. I think it is probably the policeman.”

He was apparently responding to the tragic case of an innocent 16-year-old boy who was killed when a squad of police indiscriminately pumped bullets into the shack in which he lived, before realising they had come to the wrong house. Such cases are all too common, says Padre Agostinho Duarte, a Benedictine monk who is dedicated to the rehabilitation of prisoners and juvenile offenders, and keeps an up-to-date file on police abuses, the work of the death squads, and prison conditions. Menaced with death on several occasions, Padre Agostinho campaigns throughout Brazil for tighter control of police methods, an end to the arbitrary abuse of power, and penal reform. “It is always the small criminals and underprivileged juveniles who are at risk, never the big gang

leaders. Sometimes they are finished off on the outside, clandestinely by the death squads or openly by over-zealous police patrols who find any excuse to open fire,” he says.

“Inside prisons, crammed 12 to a small cell with some sleeping on the floor, locked up most of the day, they are frequently provoked into starting small incidents, at which the shock troops go in to ‘restore order.’ In the ensuing melee, prisoners considered undesirables are expeditiously dispatched and their bodies hastily removed for burial.”

Padre Agostinho is sceptical that Governor Brizola’s plan to clean up the Rio police will have much success. “It would require almost a complete clear out, from the highest echelons to the lowest ranks. Practically the whole force would need to be replaced. I doubt if even a new broom could sweep that clean.”

Brizola’s first obstacle has come from no less than the federal government. Fearing a complete loss of control over the law and order apparatus in the important states of Rio and Sao Paulo after the election of opposition party governors, it transferred jurisdiction over the Political and Security Police, a shadowy anti-subversion organisation, from the state to the federal government — out of reach of Brizola’s reforms.